Month: September 2008
17 ways to live happily…Library!
Love your library.
It really amazes me that people buy books. There is a lovely institution in nearly every town where they will just let you take home your books (and DVDs and CDs and magazine and sometimes tools) for free. I read a lot, and take a lot of books out of the library, and what I most love is that I don’t have to read any book I check out because I didn’t buy any of them. I can grab something that looks promising and give it back if my interest wanes after 50 pages. When I do buy books, they have a different vibe. I must read the entire thing because my hard-earned money was used to obtain it.
I also find I am often paralyzed in the video rental store. Should I spend $4.00 on this movie or that. The library has rescued me from this dilemma. I just reserve the movies I want to see and when they arrive, the library lets me know. Voila! Instant free entertainment. Check out all the things your library will give you for free.
(Boise Readers will note the shout-out to the Boise Public Library! where I spent many happy hours.)
O!
I think that the expression used throughout 19th century literature should be brought back.
O!
As in: O! The joy! Or: O! The Humanity! Or: O! I do wish Pandora Radio would stop playing so much Bob Seger!
I was pretty happy when the Lewis & Clark commemorative nickles came out.
Ocean in view! O! The joy!
Although the Miss Peller in me wished they would have kept the original spelling of “ociean”
Horses! In Portland!
“If you install your own, note that Upham uses wire rope and compression ferrules. It’s a technique that often gets the attention of passers-by, such as the guy who followed her after she installed a pony in front of Lauro Mediterranean Kitchen to tell her she’d left her horse behind.
“I don’t really look like the kind of person who plays with toy horses on the sidewalk,” she said, “but I thanked him and said I’d be back for it later, but if he wanted to give it some water in the meantime, that’d be fine.”
story by John Foyston.
17 ways to live happily…Cook
Learn to cook.
When you rarely cook and don’t know how, it seems like cooking is much more expensive than going out. You have to buy all those ingredients you never use again and there is a pretty good likelihood that what you cook won’t taste as good as what you could have ordered. But if you start to cook regularly (and don’t cook from one of those cookbooks with 42 rare ingredients and 21 separate steps) you will most likely find that cooking is much cheaper than what you can order and plus you can have it your way. Plus, cooking can fulfill your sense of adventure. Start small, but start cooking.
Not THAT kind of Labor.
This happens ever year. Some deejay on the radio or newscaster on television will say something like “Labor Day is coming up. Get out and do some labor in the yard.” This causes me at home to engage in the ritual of yelling at the radio/television. Labor day is not a day set aside to labor, or work on things, it is a day that recognizes the importance of Labor Unions. You know, those things that people fought and died for the right to organize to improve working conditions. The things that only seven percent of Americans belong to anymore. The people who brought you the weekend. So next time you hear someone misunderstand the purpose of Labor Day, please take a moment to enlighten them. Labor Day: They mean the Union kind. Not just general work in the yard.
If you enjoyed this post, you can look forward to my educational Memorial Day post in May.
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Three sentence movie reviews–The 40-year-old virgin
I don’t buy the premise of this movie, that all his problems stem from being a virgin. Plenty of people are this awkward and lonely and have had sex. Putting that aside, and letting go of the fact that his friends aren’t very friendly, and this is a very raunchy movie, this is funny stuff.
Note the first: as you already know from the title if you do like/will like this movie or not, all those above qualifiers probably aren’t necessary.
Note the second: this is when I first noticed Seth Rogen. He’s not my movie boyfriend a la Edward Norton, but I do keep track of what he is up to.
Note the third: I quoted a line from this movie to Matt years ago and he has used that quote ever since, despite not having seen the movie. Now that he has seen it and he can legitimately quote the movie he probably never will again.